World Ideologies as Explained by Reference to Cows

Pure SocialismYou have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.

Bureaucratic SocialismYour cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.

FascismYou have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

NazismYou have two cows. The government shoots one for being of insufficient genetic purity. Several Bureaucrats oversee your operations with the surviving cow. They sell all of the milk, but you are permitted to retain a portion of the profit. Later, the government takes the remaining cow and shoots you for having had a cow of insufficient genetic purity.

PharaohismThe Gods have two cows, both given into your care. You must feed and milk them. At regular intervals the Priests take the milk to the Temple. The milk not used by the Gods is later shared with you. If you don’t give the Priests a problem they may let you into the Afterlife.

CaesarismCaesar, as The State, has granted you two cows. You must feed and milk them. The Caesar’s soldiers sometimes take the milk to Rome. If you don’t give them a problem they don’t burn your farm.

FeudalismYou have two cows on the Manor’s land. The Lord takes as much of the milk as he wants. Also your wife and daughters when it suits him. If you don’t give the Sheriff a problem he won’t burn your cottage.

Pure CommunismYou have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

Real World CommunismYou share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most "ability" and who has the most "need". Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows die of starvation.

Russian CommunismYou have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.

Russian Free Market EconomyYou have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the "free" market.

Cambodian CommunismYou have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you. No one ever sees the cows or the milk again. MilitarianismYou have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

TotalitarianismYou have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned. No one ever sees you again.

AuthoritarianismThe State has two cows and a person to tend them. The State decides what to do with the cows, the milk and the person.

TechnocracyYou have registered two cows. Two guys in white lab coats inspect them. Later, lab tests show you have a genetic defect. You are terminated and someone else is given the cows.

Pure DemocracyYou have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

Representative DemocracyYou have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

British DemocracyYou have two cows. You feed them the remains of other cows and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.

Texas DemocracyYou have two hundred thousand head of cattle. One of them gets Mad Cow. You sue Oprah.

Bureaucratic DemocracyYou have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, looses one in the system and milks the other. It pours the milk down the drain. You are then required to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows. And fines you for clogging the drain.

Pure CapitalismYou have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

American CapitalismYou don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.

Enron CapitalismYou have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank. He then executes a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by your CFO who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on six more.

GlobalismYou find someone in a Third World Country who has two cows. You pay him a few cents a day to milk them. You ship the milk to the First World and sell it at a huge profit.

EnvironmentalismYou own a parcel of rural land and put two cows on it. You are immediately cited by the zoning enforcement division of the County’s Community Development Board. In short order several state and national environmental groups file actions against you. Your water rights are questioned. Your solid waste plan is questioned. Your sanity is questioned. In a vain attempt to avoid a trial, you pay to have an Environmental Impact Study done to determine the impact of the cows on your neighbors. During the Public Comment phase you learn that none of them want a smelly dairy in their backyards and that one of them, anonymously, turned you in to Zoning Enforcement. You are dragged into court anyway, and found guilty of a Code Violation. You have 30 days to come into "compliance" or lose your property. Every time you return to court to prove you are compliant, Community Development has changed the code! All the while you are investigated by scores of bureaucrats from all levels of government. Your business hemorrhages red ink as the toll of fees, fines, court and legal costs (and required bribes) mounts. You have to move your cows to increasingly more remote locations as all the private land available for grazing in your area is being quietly bought up by non-governmental organizations and made into "nature preserves." Finally, you move your cows onto public lands. The government, misled by biased scientific studies conducted by scientists on the payrolls of environmental and multinational organizations, becomes concerned about erosion and bans you from grazing your cows on public land (which you, as a citizen, "own"). Meanwhile, the Animal Rights movement gets legislation passed banning you from milking or killing your cows. Soon, to be in accordance with international treaties, the government is forced to kill one of the cows to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. While they are at it, they confiscate any motor vehicle older than five years, for the same reason. Your original rural property is then condemned under eminent domain and made into a corridor for high tension power lines from the new "clean" nuclear power plant in the next state. Your remaining cow is taken by federal agents in SWAT gear in the dead of night and sent to a regional holding facility from which it is sold to some guy in a Third World Country who will be paid a few cents a day to milk it. You may buy milk at the market, in recyclable containers, but only if show your national ID card which includes encoded information on how much milk you have already purchased in particular time period. If your transaction is deemed unusual by an artificially intelligent computer program it will be flagged for human attention. You may be laundering milk! All the while, you will be required to continue to pay taxes to support the public lands you are not permitted to use, to pay for the research used to deny you the use of that land, and to support the United Nations organization which oversees all public lands (which will have been turned into UN bio-spheres by then).

Political CorrectnessYou are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallocentric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently - aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender. You do not milk them for to do so would violate their rights as a species. You wear all man-made materials, as you would never consider harming these beautiful creatures of Gaia. You have no clue where milk or hamburgers come from.

SurrealismYou have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

ProtectionismYou have two cows. Foreigners also have cows. You believe that those foreigners are milking their cows and selling their milk here for less than you can. You get the government to pass levies and tariffs against foreign milk. You also get the government to compensate you for your loss to foreign milk producers. Soon the government is paying you not to milk your cows, while milk produced off shore sells at an inflated price. You are paid to do nothing while poor children go without milk.

LibertarianismIts none of your damned business how many cows I’ve got or what I do with ’em!

Pure AnarchyYou have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

Russian AnarchyYour cows are shot in the street. You are shot in Mexico.

American AnarchyThe closest you ever got to a cow was your black leather jacket with the circle A on the back. You wear ripped up jeans and have a stud through your tongue. You think if you skate real rad maybe you can smash the State. Anarcho-SyndicalismYou have two cows. You want more control over the price of milk and less government interference in your dairy operations. You and your buddies stage a General Strike. Milk trucks are parked, blocking important highways and access to key buildings and facilities. It soon spreads to other industries, shutting down the nation. Nobody get any milk until your demands are met.

Criminal SyndicalismYou don’t own any cows, but you know who does. You and some guys with names like "Fingers," "Lefty" and "Louie" hide shotguns under your overcoats and go have a few "woids" with the guys with the cows. After a bomb mysteriously goes off in a barn you have control of all the milk on the Lower East Side.

IlluminismA Secret Cabal has two cows. One is sacrificed in a Grove in California. The other tells the President what to do. ____________________________________________________________________________